The Diabolical Miss Hyde by Viola Carr Read Free Book Online Page B

to have a good time.
    I shoulder through the smelly mass, heading for the Cockatrice public house. Ahead, a pregnant Irish girl dances drunk in the gutter, singing about Molly Malone and her wheelbarrow. “In Dublin’s fair cityy . . . where the girls are so prettyy . . .” I join in the chorus. “Cockles . . . and mussels . . . alive, alive-OH!” She grins at me, sharp-toothed. Her skirts are rucked up above her bare ankles, and a long tail like a rat’s curls from under the hem.
    A boy runs up to me, a dirty cap pulled down between his tiny sharp horns. He tosses blue fireballs from hand to hand, making them dance. “Penny for the flame, miss?”
    I toss him tuppence. He scrambles in the shit for it, and I kick aside his accomplices trying to pick my pocket while he’s distracted me and walk on.
    In the shadow of the brewery’s red-brick tower, a carved emblem of a winged dragon with a rooster’s head crows down at me from a crooked stone lintel. I push the cracked door open and step into a blast of heat, stale breath, and liquor.Sawdust crunches under my boots. The fug rolls at eye level, cigar smoke and hashish and blacker dreams.
    I spy a bloke I recognize at the bar, so I elbow my way over, kicking some lushington who gropes my behind and pushing away a drunken dolly who thinks I’m some fine Sapphic gentlewoman looking for a bit o’ rough.
    No thanks, sweetheart. Only one bit o’ rough interests Lizzie tonight, and his name is Billy fucking Beane.
    The Cockatrice is what they call a flash house, a place where criminals of all kinds congregate. Cracksmen, magsmen, coiners and fakers, card sharps and forgers, snakesmen and canaries and fencers of stolen goods. They all come here to swap information, soak their sorry arses in gin, and show off, to whatever girl or boy or blue-spotted sheep takes their fancy.
    Sly little baby-raping pimps, too, like Billy the Bastard Beane, not-guilty-your-honor-if-I-say-so-meself and the new fuck-the-coppers king of Seven Dials, at least for a few hours. Hang about here long enough, I’ll bet my garters you’ll see Billy here tonight, deep in his cups, drinking on his newfound fame while it lasts.
    I squeeze up to the bar, and a wiry, sharp-eyed cove with a lurid purple coat and tangled black hair shoves a pewter cup into my hand and splashes it with gin. “Care for a tipple, madam?”
    â€œDon’t mind if I do, Johnny.” I slap my cup against his, and gulp. Gritty fire spills down my throat and explodes, and holy Jesus, I just came alive. Eliza ain’t one for the demon liquor, and she won’t thank me in the morning, but sweet lord, Miss Lizzie likes a drink.
    I clunk the cup down and burp, and my handsome gent pours me some more.
    â€œLizzie, my darlin’, where have you been these dark and lonely weeks?” His words slur, and he flops a long arm around my shoulders and tosses me a glocky grin. Wild Johnny—so called because he raises hell—Johnny might act the fool, but his crooked eyes are quick, and like usual, he ain’t near as plastered as he makes out. “When will you abandon your licentious ways and marry me?”
    I wipe my mouth, artfully shrugging his arm off. Our Johnny’s what country folk call fey, which is to say he’s touched a bit odd. His eyes are a little too far apart, and his sharp-nailed fingers wrap further round that cup than they’ve any right to, and he smells uncanny sweet, of laudanum and rose petals over warm male skin. “You already got yourself a dolly, John.”
    He don’t seem discouraged. “Yes, it is true,” he pronounces dramatically, waving his cup in the air. “I am affy-onced, as they say on the Continent. Woe is me, my innocent heart caged like a dove by a vertible . . . a veritable shrew.”
    I wink along the bar at the shrew in question. Jemima Half-Cut, Johnny’s